Body and experiment – reflecting Kawabata Yasunari's counter-aesthetics

Abstract

From his earliest works, Kawabata, known as an explicit aestheticist, deals in his works with flawed and disabled bodies in contrast to beautiful ones, evoking feelings of revulsion, awkwardness, disgust and premonitions of decay and death. The dynamism created out of these tensions and ruptures in the aestheticized world is scrutizined as hidden counter-aesthetics through questions such as: Which kinds of impairments are to be observed? Can they be classified according to grades? Are there gender specificities? How are these tensions and ruptures organized, and which categories (semantic, biological, political, moral) are concerned? Which narratorial and other functions are served through the counter-image of the flawed (impaired) body? And finally, how do the findings from these investigations into the flipside, the ‘Other’ of Kawabata's aesthetic universe, contribute to complementary or alternative ways of reading and understanding his literature? In a final section, Kawabata's treatment of female bodies as a site of experimenting with extreme situations of passivity and agency is highlighted, challenging more conventional readings of this and other works. The works discussed are from a deliberately broad chronological and generic range, including canonical and popular works. They range from the newspaper novels ‘Utsukushii!’ (1927) and ‘Maihime’ (1950/1), the novel ‘Senbazuru’ (1952) to the stories and palm-of-the-hand stories ‘Ningen no ashioto’ (1925),’Izu no odoriko’ (1926), ‘Mekura to shōjo’ (1928), ‘Utsukushiki haka’ (1929) ‘Hokuro no tegami’ (1940), ‘Sasabune’ (1950), and, in the final section, ‘Kataude’ (1963/4) and ‘Nemureru bijo’ (1960/1).     

Does Gender Equality Affect Municipal Transparency: The Case of Spain

The influence of women in organizational transparency is an understudied vein of representative bureaucracy. Literature claims that the increase of women in formal political representation opened the opportunity to bring to public organizations gender diversity, experiences, and values different from those of men. It highlights the beneficial leadership styles and the legitimacy of public bureaucracies. Since gender equality in Spanish local government has increased in recent years, it was the trigger and the aim for this study: to understand the influence of women’s political representation on the level of Spanish municipalities’ transparency. The analysis draws on panel data econometric techniques. The results reinforce the discussion that the representation of women in local political life will increase information transparency and reduce information asymmetry in municipalities.     

“Gendering” European security: policy changes,reform coalitions and opposition in the OSCE

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has rarely been considered in scholarship on gender and security, even though it was one of the regional security organisations whose gender policy predated the United Nations Security Council’s call for more international attention to issues related to women, peace and security in October 2000. Based on an analysis of official OSCE documents and on semi-structured interviews, we trace the integration of gender issues in the OSCE and explore the rationale behind and the challenges associated with it. We identify two phases of gender policy change in the OSCE and show how the integration of UNSCR 1325 brought about an expansion of OSCE gender policy from an exclusive focus on “soft” security issues towards increased inclusion of gender in the area of “hard” security. Drawing on historical and feminist institutionalism, we argue that reform coalitions were crucial for the policy changes in the OSCE but that they encountered institutional and ideational barriers, which hampered implementation of the gender policy. In light of rising opposition, our analysis warns of a backlash that might jeopardise current achievements.     

Gender,populist attitudes,and voting: explaining the gender gap in voting for populist radical right and populist radical left parties

Empirical studies have demonstrated that compared to almost all other parties, populist radical right (PRR) parties draw more votes from men than from women. However, the two dominant explanations that are generally advanced to explain this disparity – gender differences regarding socio-economic position and lower perceptions regarding the threat of immigrants – cannot fully explain the difference. The article contends that it might actually be gender differences regarding the conceptualisation of society and politics – populist attitudes – that explain the gender gap. Thus, the gap may be due, in part, to differences in socialisation. The article analyses EES 2014 data on voting for the populist radical right and the populist radical left in nine European countries. Across countries, the gender gap in voting for the PRR is indeed partly explained by populist attitudes. For populist radical left parties, the results are less clear, suggesting that populism has different meanings to voters on the left and on the right.     

Hedonists and husbands: piracy narratives,gender demands,and local political economic realities in Somalia

The grand narrative of piracy has been instrumental in shaping how piracy off the coast of Somalia is understood and responded to. Self-proclaimed pirates, suspected pirates, and convicted piracy prisoners continue to tell the story of taking up arms against foreign illegal fishers to protect their personal livelihoods as well as Somalia’s natural resources. Although the grand narrative remains the most popular piracy narrative, this paper introduces and examines two newly emergent narratives of Somali piracy – the Somali women’s narrative and the piracy prisoner self-narrative. I explore how these narratives reveal a central paradox surrounding piracy and social reproduction in Somalia that, until now, has been absent from discussions about piracy narratives and the issue of Somali piracy. Whereas the grand narrative of piracy fails to address gender demands and local political economic realities in Somalia, the new narratives present piracy as a gendered experienced that is situated within the broader, evolving context of courtship and marriage in Somalia. I argue the new narratives can help push beyond over-simplistic understandings of piracy off the coast of Somalia as a ‘man’s crime’ that should be addressed by men.     

The chain of exploitation: intersectional inequalities,capital accumulation,and resistance in Burkina Faso's cotton sector

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how intersectional inequalities can facilitate the extraction of surplus value from agriculture. Through an ethnographic case study of the Burkina Faso cotton sector, I describe a ‘chain of exploitation’ wherein actors pass economic pressures on to less-powerful actors. People resist their own exploitation, yet justify exploiting others through discourses about intersectional inequalities – overlapping axes of social difference including class, gender, rural/urban status, and education level. I thus argue that intersectional social inequalities – exacerbated by economic pressures – can: (1) justify and thus facilitate the transfer of exploitation, and (2) fragment resistance efforts.     

Socio-economic differentiation and shea globalization in western Burkina Faso: integrating gender politics and agrarian change

In this paper, we examine the way a local manifestation of the globalization process, the boom in the shea trade in western Burkina Faso, has fueled socio-economic differentiation in shea activity as part of a wider differentiation process. We refer to the gender politics and agrarian change literatures to inform both within- and across-household mechanisms of differentiation. We analyze both the mechanisms of change and the resulting inequalities. Our results reveal the interplay between multiple drivers of change, and nuance the analysis of the winners and losers of globalization of shea activity.     

The gender implications of large-scale land deals

This article introduces a discussion of gender dimensions into the growing debate on large-scale land deals. It addresses the current information gap on the differential gender effects of large-scale land deals through (1) an overview of the phases of large-scale land deals and discussion of related effects on rural men and women based on new literature on large-scale land deals and past literature on the gender effects of commercialization and contract farming; (2) a presentation of further evidence using several case studies on the gender effects of large-scale deals; and (3) a conclusion that looks at knowledge gaps and areas for further research as well as broad recommendations for gender equitable large-scale land deals.     

Racialisation of Immigrants at Work: Labour Mobility and Segmentation of Peruvian Migrants in Chile

This article explores the emergent racialisation of Peruvian migrants as one element conditioning the labour segregation that characterises Peruvian insertion in Chile. We understand racialisation as a process of construction of categories in which both individual and collective actors participate, and whose expression is demonstrated by the differentiation and inequality that affects the racialised group. We tackle the articulation of racial differences among individual actors, both Chilean employers and Peruvian migrant workers, to suggest that the attribution of naturalised characteristics to migrants is related to segregation, mobility, and specific trajectories in the labour market.